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Welcome! You are reading a wiki article about wiki editing. Here, in this brief space, you'll learn practically everything you'll need to know about this subject. But first, notice the tabs, just above the page title. * As you read, click "edit" from time to time, to see how the text of this article is formatted. (Try that, right now!) * Make changes to the text whenever you want. (Change something now. It's all right. Really!) * When you want to resume reading, click "article," or, to save your changes, click "Publish." (Do that, now.) * Use the Table of Contents, below, to begin, or to return to where you left off. Introduction A wiki is an information management system with an unlimited number of users and contributors. Information is stored on pages. Users browse and search to find the page or pages containing information that is of interest to them. If the information is missing or incomplete or inaccurate, they themselves fix the problem by editing the wiki. Working together as a self-regulating community of contributors, users collaboratively build a massive, well-organized, consensus-verified body of knowledge. General layout Every wiki page contains an article that consists of a title and editable text. Just above the title is a row of tabs that, among other things, enables you to read, edit, rename, and watch (monitor changes) or unwatch the article. Above the tabs, at the very top, are your personal links, including a link to a wiki page about yourself! To the left of the article, there is a sidebar of links for navigating the wiki. There is also a Search box for finding a wiki page, or for finding some text on all wiki pages. Basic procedure: Edit, preview, save To contribute to the wiki, click an edit link. Use the one at the top, in the row of tabs, if you want to edit the entire article. Use the one to the right of a section heading if you want to edit only that section. Make changes within the editing window. It's all simple, plain text. Under the editing window, you'll find buttons labeled Save and Preview. If you want to see how your changes will look, click Preview. This will show you what the page or section will look like. Your changes have not yet been saved! Scroll down. You will find that the editing window is still there. You can make more changes and do another Preview if you want. When you are satisfied, click Save. Safety procedure: Revert Be bold! Change things! The wiki is designed to allow any user to change anything thing at all, harmlessly. Too good to be true? Not at all! It's really very simple, and it really, really works. Here's how: Every time you save changes, an entirely new version of the page is created and placed at the top of the page History. All previous versions still exist! If you (or anyone) ever want to "revert" to an earlier version of the page, click the History tab. This shows a list of all page versions, each labeled with the date and time when it was created; each showing, also, the name of the user who created it. So, to revert to an earlier version: # Click the History tab. # Click on the date-time of the version you want. # Edit and save that version. Basic wiki markup Wiki editing is easy! You can just type plain text and it will be displayed where you put it, in an attractive font, without any special formatting. This allows anyone, even a complete novice, to contribute to the wiki! But formatting your text is still rather important. Normal Web page formatting is known as HTML, or "Hypertext Markup Language," and it can be a pain. HTML is complicated and difficult to learn. But thanks to the clever shorthand that the wiki automatically translates for you, you'll actually be generating high-quality HTML without even knowing it! This shorthand is called "wiki markup." Read on, and explore. When you want to see what the markup actually looks like, just click the edit link for that section. Your browser's back-up button will bring you back to where you were. Paragraphs, empty lines and spaces A paragraph is text that begins in the first space on a line and extends as far as you like. A blank line precedes each new paragraph. You may, if you wish, put each sentence or phrase on its own line; however, without blank lines between them, those sentences and phrases will all be part of the same paragraph. So, to separate your text into normal paragraphs, simply put blank or empty lines between each paragraph. And, never "indent" your paragraphs using empty spaces at the beginning of a line! Text will look very odd indeed, like this, if you begin a line with an empty space! Indentation, bullets and numbered lists Indentation : An indented paragraph begins with a colon (:) in the first space. : You don't need blank lines between indented paragraphs. :: Two colons produce a double indent, and so on. Bullets * An asterisk (*) in the first space produces a bulleted word, sentence or paragraph. * You don't need blank lines between bullets. ** Two asterisks (**) produce a sub-bullet, and so on. :* Or, you can combine colons and asterisks (:*) for "indented bullets." Numbered lists # A line in a numbered list begins with a pound sign (#). # The next item in the list also begins with a pound sign, and so on. ## A sub-list begins with two pound signs. ## The sub-list continues with two pound signs # The main list resumes with the next single pound sign, and so on. # A list may not have blank lines between items. #: But if you want, you can put unnumbered lines in the middle of a numbered list by combining pound signs with colons (#:) or with asterisks (#*). # A blank line singles the end of the list Bold and italicized text Surround text with 'single apostrophes' for no special effect. Surround text with two apostrophes to produce italicized text for emphasis. Use three apostrophes for bold text. And then it's 2 + 3, five apostrophes, for bold italicized text. Section headings and tables of contents You've probably already seen how sections and section headings are produced, but if not, edit this page to observe it right now. * The text of a major section heading is on a line by itself, a line that begins and ends with two equals signs ( ). * The text of a subsection heading is also on a line by itself, but a line that begins and ends with three equals signs ( ). * You can use four, five or six equals signs to produce deeper levels, whenever you need them. Your Table of Contents is generated automatically! It will appear just above the first section heading on the page. If you want it to be somewhere else, there are codes and templates you can insert for that. See below. Hyperlinks and creating new pages It's all about links! The true power of the wiki is unleashed by the ease with which you can hyperlink to other wiki pages, create new wiki pages, and hyperlink to other places on the World Wide Web. To render text as a hyperlink, surround the text with square brackets. : Double square brackets are for links to wiki pages. : Single square brackets are for links to external Web sites. Wiki links and new wiki pages To create a hyperlink to a page called "Mystery of the Mary Celeste," you need only surround the words Mystery of the Mary Celeste with double square brackets. But what if there is no such wiki page? Not a problem! Saint Mary's Island in double square brackets shows up as a red link because there is no such page. But that's good! To create an entirely new wiki page, click on a red link! When you return to the page you where you started from, you'll find that the red link has turned blue. : You may have been wondering when you'd learn how to create pages for yourself. Now you know! Start by editing pages that already exist. (Start with your very own User page if you like. There's a link to it at the top of every page, just above the tabs.) Create hyperlinks to pages that don't exist. Click on those links. Edit those new pages. Often you will want different words to be displayed as the hyperlink. Use a vertical pipe symbol | to separate the page title from the words to be displayed. Using this syntax, the words all about the Mary Celeste can be the hyperlink to Mystery of the Mary Celeste, and where I went on my vacation can be a hyperlink to Saint Mary's Island. External links To link to an external Web site, surround the URL with single square brackets. And, instead of a vertical pipe symbol, use a blank space to separate the URL from the words to be displayed. Using this syntax, the words Phoenix Society of Baltimore become a hyperlink to a Web page. A tiny "arrow-out" symbol lets the reader know that this is a link to a external site. Namespaces User: providing information about everyone who uses the wiki Category: organizing everything on the wiki Template: making difficult formatting easy File: providing images, documents and multimedia Talk: discussing the content of the wiki Advanced wiki markup Tables Templates with variables Parser functions and magic words